I've Been pwned

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Rod


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Received today, along with explanation from https://www.troyhunt.com/

You've been pwned!

You signed up for notifications when your account was pwned in a data breach and unfortunately, it's happened. Here's what's known about the breach:

Email found: [email protected]
Breach: Mac Forums
Date of breach: 3 Jul 2016
Number of accounts: 326,714
Compromised data: Dates of birth, Email addresses, IP addresses, Passwords, Usernames
Description: In July 2016, the self-proclaimed "Ultimate Source For Your Mac" website Mac Forums suffered a data breach. The vBulletin-based system exposed over 326k usernames, email and IP addresses, dates of birth and passwords stored as salted MD5 hashes. The data was later discovered being traded on a popular hacking forum. Mac Forums did not respond when contacted about the incident via their contact us form.

Not the first time. Just FYI for everybody.:(
 

chscag

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We already know about that Rod. The so called data breach occured when Penton were the owners of the forums. The information at the time was not known but later on we found out about it. The web site that's spewing out those notices does not have all the particulars and they're causing hysteria among our members and members of other forums, not just ours.
 
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Rod

Rod


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No hysteria here. I'm a subscriber to Troy Hunt's page and that gmail address had been hacked ages ago. He further adds :
Please note that it is not possible to retrieve the passwords themselves from HIBP. If you don't want to receive any future breach notifications, just click here to unsubscribe.
If people are interested they can just check on his page as I have for myself and my wife ages ago.
I only posted this as a community announcement because it was via Mac Forums.

He also includes advice;
2 Steps to Better Password Security

Monitoring Have I Been Pwned for data breaches is a great start, now try these next 2 steps to protect all your accounts:

1Password
Step 1: Protect yourself with strong, unique passwords for each website with the 1Password password manager

1Password
Step 2: Enable 2 factor authentication and store the codes inside your 1Password account

Despite this being blatant advertising for 1Password (I don't use it myself but I do use another password manager) it is sound general advice.

I wont do it again:Blushing:
 

chscag

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No problem Rod, and thanks for the additional info regarding the Troy Hunt page. We are already working to make the site more secure and should have more info on that in the near future.

Regards, Charlie
 
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No worries. I’m afraid it’s the world we live in. I received a Facebook notification last week to say an attempted login from another state in Australia had been logged, suggesting I change my password and Microsoft locked me out of an email account a month ago due to “suspicious activity”. This is the way of it. It’s worth remembering having an account name is only half of the info needed to hack any account. The worst that can happen is probably an increase in Spam email. SpamSeive does a pretty good job of handling that.
 
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mac forums hacked in 2016? I never got any emails telling me about it. not that I'm aware of. something like this, it would have been nice if someone sent out an email to all users? just a thought. guess whoever owned the forums then didn't think it was important to let users know? these days people try to keep hacked/compromised sites quiet so I'm not too surprised.
 
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" The information at the time was not known but later on we found out about it. "

When was that that "we" found out about it? I found out about it yesterday.
 

chscag

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The previous owners of the forums did not send out a notice or at least post a message to the forums for all to see. Since the forum software requires a password change be made to your account every 120 days, that insures your password is safe.
 
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Since the forum software requires a password change be made to your account every 120 days, that insures your password is safe.
The forum has never prompted me to change a password. I do change it about once a year, but have never heard from the site to do so. You might want to check that, Charlie, to see that it's working.
 
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The forum has never prompted me to change a password. I do change it about once a year, but have never heard from the site to do so. You might want to check that, Charlie, to see that it's working.
I also haven't been asked to change my password in a very long time. Is there any way for me to find out when a password was created for websites?
 

chscag

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The forum has never prompted me to change a password. I do change it about once a year, but have never heard from the site to do so. You might want to check that, Charlie, to see that it's working.

I believe it's also set to ask for a password change based on how many posts you make. I had to change my password yesterday. The notice I received stated that I had not changed passwords in the past 120 days. I probably also exceeded the amount of posts. It will flag you whichever comes first.
 
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Rod


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I always thought it was because I beat them to it but I haven't received a notification for a few years so maybe........?
 

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I too have never been asked to change my PW by our Forums. Although I may not be a prolific poster, I do post once or twice every day. Whether it counts for or against, I don't log out. I keep the site open as I use it a great deal during the day and evening.

Anyway, life goes on and we do our best in a difficult world.

Ian
 
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